A few people said / write something succinct / shorter than your usual / elaborated rhetoric / don’t you know how to / edit and be precise in your / measurement of words / good writers don’t need / verbal diarrhea / they can mold meaning / certain as bending copper / to light.
She thought it over
Knowing it was possible
After all she’d written some very
Shaved and glutted poems
Once.
(It wasn’t her way and if you are not true to your way
then you may as well be another lemming / willing to leap / from cliffs edge
of course this precludes learning which is / a value immeasurable
sometimes you can learn everything and still / go back to drawing unrealistically).
Finding something – – – perhaps it’s not a poem or a form but a short story
In the elongation and manipulation of reality and precision. Imprecise then. Deliberately.
Long ago she had no words because she couldn’t spell well enough to write. So she drew. For hours. Reels of paper. Stories by picture. Things she needed to say. To no one listening.
When she saw Woman In A Red Armchair hanging in a burgundy room / the silence palpable aside / rain hammering outside / mercilessly / like a hundred mouths clamoring
she tried not to stare at the line that made the woman / female
but was drawn to it as she might have been / a real breathing woman
something exquisite and desirable / she longed to see a live flesh and blood girl
to touch her with her empty hands and run them over her / quivering flesh
until those colors swelled up / and she cried out / for the sheer torment and beauty
but
no girls existed / save those who / liked boys / there were plenty of them
why were they all heterosexual?
why wasn’t she?
In America she heard / there are entire schools / devoted or a byproduct perhaps / lesbians / and only-girls-schools / well don’t start on them …
living in the city / you’d think but you’d be wrong / a few pinches / mostly shorn / forlorn
empty eyed / emulating men / less female than / those who wanted to lie beneath them.
Where existed that / judge not / beauty / with /dark eyes
the missing / beat / savor / prosper / sail
to her / soul.
If she could have / found her all along / not searching years but moments / glimpsed
sight and immediately / both knew / this bond before / words spoken
even at 13
even before she were born
perhaps you dreamed of me
created in the stillness of your loneliness / that which you did not have / filling emptiness with yearning / I am born to be / the wet ink on your skin / a permanence / no longer waiting / arms outstretched / for dreams unnecessary / now we / are.
Never quite together / torn asunder / this year the blackcurrents come later / as if they knew / what wonders and nightmares / store / waiting behind the pitch / to come rushing / we tried / we failed / the frailty of emotion / it bleeds easily / like thin skin / gone a-blackberrying / on a listless day / no clouds nor movement / sky dim / with unspent rain / the longing stored up / causing pain.
Perhaps you dreamed of me.
I stood — uncertain — proud backed —
against the light
where shape can be outlined
most acutely
if then you’d looked — ephemeral — something unstated
in muted expression
what we do not say — what we hold inside — contains the greatest
message.
Return to me. Though you are gone. Through the shroud. Time be gentle. Time be cruel.
Different and the same. Recollecting nothing. There is the proof. Stained on our table. Where you cut yourself. On a sharp knife of desire. And I opened to you. Ballet within music. Rapture closed us together. Forgotten. How do you not remember.
That long night we ran barefoot?
Flowers close their drowsy heads. Against night. Sleep. An eternity. Wakening. We are
strangers. Again.
Loss. A pressed red petal against Italian paper. Seeking its watering. I am so thirsty for your return. My love.
TheFeatheredSleep 